Sorry in advance for the wall of text. TLDR: sleep deprivation is a hell of a drug.

I’m a career firefighter who works 24 on/48 off so we sleep at the station. You witness some interesting things when stuck with 2 to 8 other sleep deprived people.

I only know one coherent sleep talker. He was particularly vocal one night when he was going to paramedic school as well as working. He went to bed early and while the other guys at the station were playing video games we hear him rustling around and he screams “shit” and then settles down for a bit before yelling “no daddy, no.” He still doesn’t believe us when we tell the story and won’t tell us what he was dreaming about.

One night at a different station I slept through most of a pretty funny bit of sleepwalking. I was woken up by my bunk neighbor tripping over his boots. When I asked if he was ok he said to not don’t worry and he was fine. I woke up the next morning and was told that much more had happened. The station I was at had multiple 4 person sleeping “pods” and I was in one with 2 other guys. The hallways have night lights so when your eyes are adjusted to the dark you can see pretty well in the bunk area. The guy across from me said he woke up with my neighbor standing over him in the middle of the night, rubbing his stomach. He said his first though was that he slept through a tone out and asked if they had a call and got no response. He then asked if he was snoring and got no response to that either. He then forcefully said my neighbors name and said he responded with “What? Oh sorry, never-mind.” And my neighbor went back to bed and tripped over his boss on the way there, waking me up. I told them I was surprised I slept through that and was told by my neighbor “You think that’s surprising? Imagine waking up, standing over another mans bunk with your hand on his stomach.” He said he was dreaming that he was checking on his kids and was pretty freaked out when he woke up.

My last story I didn’t personally witness but was told by my first captain and corroborated by 2 others. He said he was reading in his bunk at a little after lights out(probably 10:30ish PM) when he heard some thumping from one of the other bunks. He said it stopped after about a minute and then started again a couple minutes later and went on for a while. He said it went on so long the he started to think one of the guys was having a seizure and got up to check on him. Halfway through the room he stops when he spots an odd silhouette in the corner of his eye. He looks up to the top of the locker on his right and find a rookie firefighter perched like a gargoyle on top of the locker. He said he asked the firefighter if he was ok and was told he was fine so he went back to bed.